


Just the Echoes of Scars

by Evitcani



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death, Missed Opportunities, growing older, sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 08:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17659436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evitcani/pseuds/Evitcani
Summary: Kravitz wasn’t a prince, not like Taako.Thirty-one years after Kravitz was too late, Taako was right on time.





	1. Holding Hands, Makin’ All Kinds of Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if there’s more?

Cherry blossoms cushioned the aisle. It was like a fairy tale, the sky painted in watercolor and the lake such a vivid blue it almost hurt to glance it against the black and white garbed guests. Kravitz pinned Taako’s veil to his hair. His hands came to rest on Taako’s shoulders and they looked at each other in the mirror. Both in their best suits, neither smiling.

Kravitz forced something like a smile on his face, squeezing Taako’s shoulders. “Like you dreamed about, isn’t it?”

Taako put his hand over Kravitz’s. “Like _we_ dreamed,” he whispered. 

The words were a punch to Kravitz’s gut. His fingers twitched under Taako’s. Taako’s hand slipped away from his and the door opened. “It’s time,” Lup told them, giving Kravitz a look that made her words feel more like condolences. Taako stood up and went to her side.

“I’ll meet you at the reception,” Kravitz promised, standing up as if he could follow. 

Taako glanced back, but said nothing and then slipped through the door, out of his life. 

The reception would never come to Kravitz. Kravitz spent it waylaid in the kitchens, running errands for the castle until midnight rang so loud that even he had to notice he was too late. He closed his eyes and squeezed the back of the chair he was standing behind in the emptying ballroom. “I love you,” he told no one. “Run away with me.” Like Cinderella, the magic they’d spun over the last several weeks turned back into pumpkins and rats and words.

Life went back to what it’d been. 

Kravitz wasn’t a prince. He was a busboy sometimes barista at a wedding venue his mother owned because they’d been the distant cousins of distant cousins and then _only surviving kin_. It cost a fortune to keep the place running, but his mother did out of some stubbornness and Kravitz had helped her since they’d moved there when he was 12. 

One day, maybe, he’d be a lawyer. He’d only been a student when Taako had found his hand on the table, a sudden rain having trapped them inside away from the castle. They’d never even kissed but Kravitz had traced Taako’s hand with his hesitant thumb so many times that he still felt its shape in dreams for months.

They’d woven dreams into their conversation. Taako had never met his fiancee, but he’d been sent here to prepare for their wedding. Even if they’d run away, they would have been found. Taako _was_ the prince and so was the man he was marrying. It didn’t stop them from whispering about running like a sweet nothing or scrawling it across cups and napkins that would be lost as soon as found. 

The cafe closed a year after Taako’s wedding. It had just been a cottage converted to a cafe behind the lake and it sunk back to its origins as soon as the espresso machine was gone. 

Kravitz took it over and trimmed rose bushes around the perimeter of the backyard as if he would need the privacy. The booths were replaced with a dining table and couches. When it would rain, Kravitz would find his thumb drawing fingertips to the faux leather beside his textbooks. 

The castle opened another cafe in the library two years after Kravitz moved into the old cottage. It was small, only the village and venue guests keeping the register fed. His mother hoped being closer to the castle itself would keep it running this time. He worked there every day after it opened. His thumb no longer knew the shape of Taako’s hand. 

A year later, they’d stop accepting cash at all and only took credit on a slick little touchscreen. When it would rain and Kravitz was the only one in the library, he’d remember how Taako looked gazing out the window of his cottage like a reflex. It would come to him unbidden, a helpless association like a song he only knew half the words to. He couldn’t forget Taako’s face, of course; it was on newspapers and magazines. 

So much bigger than Kravitz, so much better than Kravitz could give. 

Two years after the cafe stopped taking cash, Kravitz remembered they’d never really wanted to run. They would have hid in this library that had been forgotten until the second cafe, _Le Café Joyeux Lune_. The two of them could have been lost in the books and each other’s eyes and to the rest of the world.

When everyone had left, Kravitz could have closed the castle to guests and made it work. Somehow, they would never be found and would build a life in each other. They never would have made it work but in their whispers. He let the memory go and closed his laptop.

A year later, Kravitz was too sick to walk across the stage at his graduation. He found out the next day from a picture splashed across the local newspaper he put on the cafe stands that Taako had given a speech to his graduating class. Kravitz stopped and closed his eyes. 

And laughed.

Four years later, his mother decided to convert the castle into a small bed and breakfast. There were more tourist attractions nearby. It made sense. Kravitz spent days reopening closed rooms, a face mask protecting him from the dust. Between the extra work at home and his caseload at the law firm, he forgot about the world outside of his. He didn’t check the news anymore, besides what local snippets of gossip he wanted. 

Kravitz was lost to the world.

The king was dead, long live the king. 

A year after the castle started accepting guests, Kravitz thought he found the love he would have sprinted across the world for. 

His lover was older. It was her divorce that led her to the bar at the conference they met at. They kept each other’s numbers and met when they travelled near one another. 

It wasn’t what he’d seen it dreams with Taako, but it made his heart flutter. Their love was no less wonderful, but it took months of them sprawled out beside each other to find the wonder. He thought it was funny that the love he’d known before came and went in heartbeats. This one took time to plant and grow.

And it blossomed under both their hesitant hands. 

Three years after meeting, they didn’t fuss with a wedding. Both of them were too practical for veils and fairy tales. They went to the courthouse and didn’t do more dreaming than the family they wrote into contract. This was enough for both of them.

Ten years later, Kravitz’s realized, again, that he’d been too late. 

Six years later, his mother warned him a very special guest would be arriving soon. He waved his hand because every guest these days was some celebrity or influencer or fraction of a noble bloodline. To put it bluntly, Kravitz was a little too old to be starstruck anymore. His hair distinguished him with streaks of white in his reflection when it would rain. His thumb would trace the memory of a summer when he was much younger, but the words to the melody he caught himself humming were lost. 

He let his daughter do all the dreaming he needed in his life. She dreamed so big and fully. She drifted from violin lessons to ballet class to French to painting, turning each interest over before she found another talent to pursue. Kravitz was sure she’d hang the stars one day.

Two days after his mother had warned him, his daughter rushed into his room too early for Kravitz to be conscious. She shook him out of a dream about a library on an island. “Baba,” Alice whispered, terrified. “Baba, there’s someone in the house.”

That had him up with the baseball bat in hand. 

A stranger stood in the window watching the rain, a wet newspaper in hand. Kravitz couldn’t help but to relax a little at the sight of his clothes. The man was clearly a very damp, very rich guest who had probably been taking a stroll when he was caught in the storm. 

Kravitz grabbed a house coat and put it on before clearing his throat, “Sir? Sorry, but I think you’ve gotten lost. This isn’t open to the public.”

“It isn’t?” The man sounded genuinely surprised, turning slowly. “There used to be a cafe here,” he smiled at Kravitz just like he had decades ago, as if a day hadn’t gone by. “You’ve gotten old, handsome.”

Thirty-one years after Kravitz was too late, Taako was right on time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy this very quick vignette of a story. :) Wrote this the last couple of days.


	2. It’s Much Too Strong to Let it Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako waits for something.

Macallister Kravitz Fiddle was the same person Taako had left behind in his dressing room. The same person he’d looked for as he twirled at his reception. A little older, perhaps, but age hadn’t touched the kindness in his eyes or the softness of his smile. All the things Taako had fallen in love with over the few weeks Kravitz had been put in charge of being his constant companion while at this castle. 

The castle had changed since he’d last been here. More rooms were open and there were people everywhere. The halls were bursting with warmth and whispered conversations. Taako had found a little alcove on the upper floor of the cafe slash library to hide in. Royal guards stood not far away, two on the lower landing by the stairs, eyeing every person who came in. 

He looked down at his left hand on the table, the ornate ring gilding it. Of course, he’d noticed the girl in the hallway, peeking out with the same kind eyes as Kravitz. What he hadn’t noticed was Kravitz wearing a wedding ring. There were no photos of someone else in the house when Taako had glanced around. It meant there _had_ been someone and it had ended, probably messy. 

After a moment of hesitation, Taako twisted off the ring and shoved it inside his jacket. 

Given, he really had thought the old cottage was still a cafe and hadn’t given it more than a once over. Kravitz had invited him to stay until the rain stopped, but Taako had insisted on leaving after extracting plans to meet at the cafe. He hadn’t come back to this castle on accident. No, Taako knew Kravitz had been a very minor noble who hadn’t known the lord who’d died without any other kin and left them this castle. Like his throne, without a clear line of succession but with clear inheritance laws it’d ended up in the hands of someone who wasn’t even from the country. 

The king was dead, long live the king.

For now Kravitz’s mother was the Lady of the castle, but she didn’t act like one. For now, too, Taako was king and he’d had to learn to act like one. It was really Kravitz who had handed him his throne, but he doubted the man knew that. Kravitz had told him how inheriting the castle had gotten him interested in law, inheritance laws specifically. 

Taako hadn’t wanted to care. He’d been ready to go home after his husband’s funeral. Lup convinced him to stay. Together, they’d disproved the inheritance claim of a man who would’ve been a dictator. They hid the true next of kin from the world and instead named a farmer, Tamryn McDonald, as the heir to the throne according to blood.

He took a sip of coffee and saw Lady Raven Fiddle walking past the library arches, dressed as no more than a maid. Smiling to himself, he sat back and hoped she’d forgive him. Only three people in the world — himself, his sister, and Angus — knew Lady Fiddle had been his husband’s next of kin. They were distant cousins, but less distant to his husband than they’d been to the castle’s previous owner. 

Taako thought she would have understood why he’d chosen to name Tamryn than drag her and her son into a messy dispute over a country’s figurehead. Tamryn had already fought to have his name recognized decades before Taako’s husband had died. His trouble had given him an incomplete set of silverware as inheritance. The money from selling it had saved his ailing daughter’s life. He’d disappeared from the public shortly after, but was willing to make a deal when Taako found him again.

Tamryn made Taako keep the throne until his daughter was ready. His daughter died years later, before she was ready, and Tamryn had to ask Taako to change their deal. The old farmer was dying and his grandson had no one else. Taako had traced the McDonald’s whole family. He knew there would be no one else when Tamryn died. Tamryn was sorry, so sorry. He’d apologized sixteen times. He knew Taako wanted to be done, to go home and now he was asking Taako to raise a child, another sixteen years as king at least. Sixteen days after agreeing, Taako had met Angus beside Tamryn’s coffin. 

The boy had been too young to understand the difference between sleeping and death. 

It hadn’t surprised, Taako, not really. Tamryn’s daughter Emilie had been so shy Taako suspected she would have never been ready. The clock on the cafe wall chimed, breaking Taako out of his reverie. He closed his eyes and took a breath. 

Kravitz was running late. 

Maybe he wasn’t going to show up at all. Taako made himself look outwardly calm, but was sweating under his collar. The last time he’d come to the castle, Kravitz hadn’t been in it at all. He’d toured it when he’d given a speech at the nearby university. It’d been an excuse, an excuse to try to find Kravitz. He’d expected him around every corner and left disappointed. 

He felt like a fool. Kravitz probably hadn’t thought back to the rain and the cottage cafe in years. He probably only remembered Taako’s face because he was the king. Maybe, he would tell others he’d met _The King_ once. The weeks they’d spent together had been lost in the years. Taako was a foolish old man chasing the summer love of his youth. 

Maybe he was just doing it because he wanted to feel young again. Not because there’d been something there, in their joined hands and in the fog on the windows that had heard all their whispered dreams. This had to be more of a vanity project because of the wrinkles around his eyes and the gray that stained his hair. 

And then Kravitz was there, in the library archways. 

His shirt was stained, jacket over one arm. He was missing a shoe and his hair had barely been tamed into a ponytail. Kravitz’s wild eyes found Taako on the upper landing and he took a deep breath, visibly relaxing. With a smirk, Kravitz gave Taako a cheeky bow and Taako flicked his hand, telling him to rise. 

Kravitz took the stairs up to Taako’s table. “You won’t believe the morning I’ve had trying to get here,” he told Taako as he sat down. 

“I better believe it,” Taako sniffed, looking away from Kravitz. “It’s a crime to make a king wait. So get on with your testimony.”

Kravitz laughed, soft and sweet. His hand found Taako’s on the table as if it’d been there through all the years they’d spent apart. “I’m a lawyer, Taako, and I know there’s a few missteps you’ve taken in your arrest that’ll have this case thrown right out,” he smiled at Taako. He seemed to realize where he’d put his hand and pulled it back with a nervous laugh.

Taako smiled and reached across the table to put his hand on Kravitz’s. He gave it a comforting squeeze. Kravitz looked away shyly, but twined their fingers together. They sat, for a moment, in the weeks they’d spent and the years they’d lived. 

When the moment passed, they let go of what had been and started talking about the future they didn’t need to run away to have. It started with, “How are you?” and ended with, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd that’s it! Maybe one day I’ll update this, but I think this is a happy enough ending for these two.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow my [Tumblr](https://evitcani-writes.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Evit_cani).


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